On Being Jewish

In England, from the beginning, I knew I was different and somehow not very acceptable. Oh, I was cute - I had curls and dimples and an outgoing personality but I was Jewish - and I knew that from the get go.

I started school at the age of 4 - my parents had found jobs in Whitchurch, Hampshire - and gently removed me from my English foster family. Once I went to school, the differentiation became more pronounced. The kids teased me - but kids do that everywhere and for any reason - or for no reason. But I was sent from the room during prayers - I got to stay out in the hall with the gypsies. And, with the gypsies, I had my hair carefully examined for lice.

I'm pretty sure the principal didn't like me or Jews very much - she used a metal comb to section and search my scalp and at times I thought she'd draw blood with it.

I must say I was a pretty bright little thing and sociable. My Mother was very upset with me because I didn't cry for her or cling to her as she left me my first day in school. She'd bring that up for years. But I was happy to be with other children and doing interesting things. I had a hard time keeping my mouth shut in class and was forever getting into trouble about talking too much - not much has changed.

My Mother , the eternal looker out for my interests, signed me up for a theatrical/dance group
and for years I performed plays based on fairy tales - usually playing the boy's roles - even before I learned to read. Usually someone walked me through my role and told me the words I had to say and I learned them that way.

I also learned basic ballet and dance - which I love to this day. And I think I had no fear of performing - then - because I ended up with good roles in the plays and in prominent positions in the dance.

I do remember learning to read though - the process was that we learned the sound of the letters and then had to stand in front of the room and sound out the words. I had no clue what the process was or the goal for that matter. It was just something teachers did.

So, one day, I was in front of the room, sounding out my letters when all of a sudden those very same letters floated into words, and the words made sense. I said "Oh, I see." and started reading fairly fluently. The teacher stopped me "What are you doing?" she asked. I responded "I'm reading." She sent me to my seat and I thought I had done something wrong.

When class ended, she told me to stay after. I sat and waited and worried while she left the room and then came back with several other teachers. She then told me to read - and I did. The next day I was moved into the higher grade.

I think the structure of the school was that "when the child is ready" the instructor would move them into the next grade. I slithered through the first 3 levels of school in about 3 months and was soon in a class with much older children. It didn't bother me - unless they bothered me.

My Math skills were not so great as my reading skills. Those numbers never floated into any meaningful patterns that I could discern. So it's a good thing I was stuck in the 6th Form for three years. I couldn't take the national exams until I was 10 so I had to stay there. We left England the summer I was 10, so I never knew if I could have passed those exams or not.

Those exams, as I understand it, decided your future. If you were in a lower percentile you would go to a technical or craft school. If you were higher, you got an academic education and a future.

When we came to the United State, Los Angeles to be specific, I was very insulted that they didn't know how brilliant I was. They just put me in Fifth grade with the other 10 year olds
and processed me from then on according to my age - no matter how smart I was. There wasn't much incentive to excell in that environment.

I got good grades and worked in the office in 6th grade - of course, I took advantage of that special position and looked at my "cum" card and was shocked to see that the teacher had written in that first year in the USA, that I was very mercenary. To this day, I have no idea how she could have come to that conclusion. Nothing that occurred in class, or for that matter on the playground, that had anything to do with money or material acquisitions. Certainly nothing on the level that warranted it appearing on my "cum" card and traveling with me throughout my school experience. I finally decided that that teacher didn't like Jews - the first time in the USA that I applied that label to someone. It stung because I knew that that was what people believed about Jews - I'd had a good dose of that kind of treatment in England, but I was not prepared for it here.

When I say that I had anti-Semitic treatment in England it was hard to really define.

I remember that I was invited to a very posh party at the Manor House at Christmas time.
I was shown off (my parents were not invited, only me) by the adults who called me the "little Jewish girl". Not my name, just the label. I didn't like it. I was in total awe of the house and it's contents. Remember we lived in four rooms (small ones) without water, power or gas. The Manor House had a living room/sitting room bigger than our whole house and it was filled with furniture. Soft sofas, occasional tables, gilt lamps and crystal chandeliers. The Christmas tree reached the sky - and was covered with beautiful decorations and candles. I was very envious.

I didn't like it when people asked to touch my curls and asked "Where are the horns?"
I didn't like waiting in the hall with the gypsies while prayers were said.
I didn't like being called and teased by the name "Jerry" - it was what they called Germans but I wasn't German!
The teachers called me "The Little Polish Girl" which felt even more foreign to me. I suppose it was to try and protect me from anti-German sentiment but it didn't work.

I realized years later, on looking back on England that except for the Sims (my foster family) we were never invited into someone's home - not for parties, not for Sunday dinner and not to play.

The one family where I did play in the time before school started in earnest, I realized that my Mother cleaned house there and I could play with their daughter of the same age while my Mother worked. When school started the daughter, Rosemarie, went to a public (private) school.

That said - I was still happy in England. I didn't mind being on my own a lot. But I did feel like an outsider always. I pretty much roamed the farm and local area unsupervised. I read everything I could get my hands on and loved history - which I saw all around me. From the church "Where G-d has been worshiped for 1000 years" to the silk mill where a child had drowned sometimes in the 18th century.

So my memories of England are overall good.

Spiritual Journey's

I know - it's a turnoff. The first time I walked into an OA meeting and heard the word "G-d" I freaked out and turned off. Only my desperation to get off the dieting cycle and lose weight permanently made me go back. That was about 1972 - and I lasted four years.



At that time the "program" was very rigid - one food plan fits all - and y ou can't speak at meetings or do service unless you had "abstinance" - I fell off the wagon and just couldn't make myself go back for many, many years. They were so punitive.



I finally got tired and scared of all the yo-yo'ing weight - and the fact that each time I gained the weight back, it was higher than the time before. I obsessed over weight and food so that my thoughts were all the time what had I eaten, when would I eat again, how much could I safely eat blah blah blah blah.



So I went back - and I found that the program had grown and changed over the years as had I.

It was kinder, more accepting and, at least here in Santa Rosa, had a more spiritual angle which was not demanding, but supportive.



But, I had to find a Higher Power - that was necessary. In the beginning my Higher Power was the doorknob, (it just couldn't be ME) then the group itself. But later it was necessary for my concepts to grow to match my needs and that was very hard. I did try some Eastern relgions - at least I read about them and went to one or two services . I knew that I could not deal with Christianity or the Moslem faith - I'm really a committed Jew - on levels I can't even explain for someone who distained the actual practices.



But again, needing something, I went to services here in S.R. at various temples and found a place I could call home. It's Reform, but it has it's own perspective and there was a very inclusive attitude. Gays were welcome, mixed marriages were welcome, children of mixed marriages were welcome, I was welcome - with all my questions, debates and frustrations.

Also, I felt kind of isolated here in Santa Rosa. There isn't a large Jewish community as there was in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles. So after a short time living here we went to the Jewish Film Festival in San Francisco. Waiting in line, surrounded by my fellow Jews, I felt at home. All the loud talking, ebullient discussion, interupting and simultaneous talking felt like I was in the right place.

At work I was "the only Jew" and many people didn't know quite what to make of me.
My first year at the agency, they told me that they exchanged Christmas ornaments for the holidays so I said "well, forget me - I don't have a Christmas tree." Well, you'd think I tried to kill the Pope they were so dumbfounded.

After a year or so there, my boss came running up to me and said "We've hired another Jew."
Well.....Yayyy. She turned out to be ultra Orthodox and didn't last long here - but, son of a gun, she knew of Morey's family and even some of the gossip in the Orthodox community about them. Small world.

Anyway, we joined the Reform temple as it seemed so warm and welcoming and I've never regretted it. Rabbi George came to the temple about a year later - new out of school and very naive in some ways - but very earnest and searching for ways to make Judaism more present for himself and for the community. He has come a long way as have I. He goes every summer to Israel and is working on his PhD. and it shows in his discussions, classes and Torah study.

So last year I attended a couple of adult Bnai Mitzvahs' and was so touched I decided to do it myself. Silly me, I thought I'd quietly learn what I needed and then do a Saturday service with George and it would be no big deal. But the more I shared with family and friends what my plan was, the more it became a big deal. People expressed the desire, no - they demanded that they be invited. Shelley said she'd come without an invitation!! So I'm touched that so many people (it seems) care about me and my spiritual journey. And, of course, I definitely want my immediate family to share the experience with me.

And I'm still searching - so is George. I feel a deep commitment to the Jewish people, our history, our "culture" and that feeling of "belonging" I get when I'm around them. I feel an obligation to all those died for their faith - or even their lack of it - just for being Jewish. I'm part of a chain that stretches back in time and I regret that I didn't know this about myself earlier.

I find the Torah difficult, misogynist and brutal but another Rabbi at our congregation once said the "The Torah is too important to be taken literally." So we search - all of us at Torah study. What could this possibly mean for modern people? How can we interpret it in a way that is acceptable , even supportive in this time and place. No two people see it the same way - even in our relatively small group - but we are all searching for meaning and connection.

I must admit that the music is a BIG deal for me. I think my Mother must have sung the melodies of prayers all my life because I "know" them...it's like it's genetic or something. I can't really explain it.

As an addendum to "life with Mom", I have to say that there was always music in the house. Even in the years in England. We had a RADIO, which was big deal - and Mom and I knew all the words to all the songs that were the background music of our lives. (I think I've forgotten them all Carol)......but even without the radio, my Mother had grown up with Judaism being a daily event in her life from morning prayers thanking G-d for the return of life and breath to thanking G-d for everything blessing, and asking G-d's help with every hurdle. It was automatic with Mom to say "Thank G-d" or "With G-d's help" or "G-d forbid" with any appropriate statement. She also hummed and sang the prayers she grew up with as the music of her daily life....and subtley mine.

So, yes, the music is very important and I don't like it when the cantorial soloist changes the music or introduces "new" music - but I get used to it.

I'm reading Torah for my Bat Mitzvah (shared with 9 other women) and so I only do a small portion (thankfully - I don't think my aging brain could remember the whole thing like the 13 year olds do). The music of that portion sings in my brain every day - and I hope it will sing for me on THE day. But I enjoy it.

I've told my teacher and George that I don't need or want to "understand" the Hebrew. If I get words, my left brain immediately goes to arguing with the words, analyzing them, taking them apart and derailing me from that "place" I want to go which has no words.

When I took art classes, the teacher was very insistant on doing exercises that kept the left brain busy so that the right brain could express itself in the art. And that is somehow what happens with prayers. The left brain is busy reading - while the music does something else for me.

So that's my journey up to now. I find myself in an amazing and completely unexpected place
spiritually and even if it's "just aging", I'm glad to be here.

Ways and Means Part 2

So, back to Mom.

She arrived in England with 2 suitcases. I believe that she had a friend in Berlin ship a trunk - or something, because we had featherbeds from Germany and Mom's china (some of it that didn't get broken) that was her marriage china. There were some linens and Sabbath candlesticks from my Grandmother - also a Chanukah menorah from my Grandmother.

I doubt that all that was in her suitcases.

My Grandmother had four candlesticks for Shabbat. Two were taller than the others. She gave two to my Aunt Toni and two to my Mother and it was only later that Mom noticed that she had a mismatched pair. Carol got my mismatched pair which I had inherited from Mom. They were brass - not valuable except in emotional attachment.

They were lit every Friday of my young life wherever we were and I remember once they were lit in England and there came a banging at the front door. My Mother quickly hid the lit candles - it was two members of the British police wanting to know if my Father had any contact with his cousin (who seemed to be involved in black marketing). My Father didn't and cursed his cousin for being a stupid troublemaker. But I always remembered the fear of the police (in their long leather coats) and the hiding of the Jewishness of the candles.

So somehow my Mom managed to finagle into our four room cottage on the farm (Manor Farm Cottages, Whitchurch Hants.) a dining table and four chairs; an easy chair for my Father; a treadle sewing machine (more on that later) and a pump organ that lived in the kitchen and was MINE.

The cottage had no electricity, no gas and water came from a well in the foyer (which I was terrified of). Later they put in piped water but it came from a faucet outside and we had to heat it up on a kerosene stove to cook, wash dishes or take baths. There was also a wood stove which heated the whole house - not well as the basin and ewer in my room, from which I performed my morning ablutions, usually froze over.

There was an outhouse in the back of the garden and a bucket in the foyer for emergencies.

Upstairs we had two beds - a chest of drawers for my parents. For me a closet (with no back)
and a stand for the ewer and basin.

Later my Mother acquired a piano for me as she arranged for me to have piano lessons from the only other Jewish couple in town - Auntie Rose and Uncle Walter. They were Viennese and Auntie Rose was quite an accomplished pianist. I was her first pupil.

The kitchen was a room. There was a sink, but water had to be carried in. The cooking was done on a kerosene stove. There was no refrigeration. Milk was delivered by not all the way to the farm - I had to bring it home by picking it up on the way home from school. That was a twice a week event. My Mother fed the garbage to the chickens by boiling it into a mash.

The radio was our major source of information about the outside world and Winston Churchill's voice was a major part of my growing up. My parents hovered over the radio as though their lives depended on it - and in some ways it did. For years a "hobby" of mine was to think of places to hide, just in case. I never really focused on who I had to hide from - I just knew I had to be creative about hiding.

My parents somehow got involved in making jewelry as a hobby (?). They bought sealing wax and some small tools and created floral designs on buttons. My Father converted safety pins to catches and attached them to the back of the buttons. We sold these - somehow - to a lot of people.

Then my Mother made herself a winter coat (using that old treadle sewing machine) from an Army blanket. Soon half the town was lined up at our front door with Army blankets in hand and my Mother made coats for them all. She became the seamstress for the town and I remember before we left she made a wedding dress and all the bridesmaids dresses and WE were invited to the wedding. I still have the photograph of that.

Mom made almost all my clothes out of remnants from these customers and I was sometimes embarrassed when people recognized the clothes I wore as being the same material as their items. It wasn't often, but it happened.

I think Mom was basically very creative - I remember she and my Father poring over patterns trying to figure out what the English instructions meant. I've done some sewing in my time and I speak English well, and have had trouble with the instructions.

My Father worked on the farm. He got all the Sunday assignments because "Jews don' t care about working on Sunday" I don't remember that he got a lot of Saturdays off, but maybe he did. I often went with him to feed the pigs. I sometimes got to drive the cart and horse that we used to get about to the various sites where animals had to be fed.

But it was my Mother who found books for me and especially books about Jewish subjects geared towards children. She had a friend who lived in London. Mrs. Young. Erna Young had been the cook in the household where my Mom worked as a housemaid. They shared a room.
Erna had a son, older than I and I don't know where he lived. Mr. Young - when given the choice, went into the British Army. My Dad chose to work on a farm as he said he couldn't imagine killing fellow Germans.

I think my Mom envied Erna's life because she had it much easier living in London. First of all there were other Jews - but also life was hard for my Mother as she had to do all the household work without the aid of electricity. So Laundry was boiled in a tub over a wood fire, wrung out by hand and hung on lines to dry - or freeze - depending on the weather. Ironing was done by heating two irons on the wood fire stove and changing back and forth between them. Even with all this, my Mother laundered weekly and ironed everything including my pajamas and socks!!

My Mother also tended chickens and rabbits. The rabbits were ostensibly mine, and they were always escaping. I never put two and two together to realize that whenever one of my rabbits escapted we had rabbit stew for dinner. My Mother sometimes sold the eggs from the chickens but mostly we ate them ourselves.

Mom also tended a large vegetable garden where she grew potatoes, carrots, cabbages, brussel sprouts, onions - an anything else she could manage. Where she learned to do all this, I have no idea. She never lived on a farm before England.

Mom also "put up" jams, jellies, sauerkraut and preserved fruits and vegetables by canning.
Her industriousness and hard work were legendary and 30 years later when my foster Father called in the Los Angeles to tell me his wife, my foster Mother, had died he mentioned in the conversation that my Mother could squeeze more out of thruppence than anyone he ever saw.

He also told me that I was speaking English within 6 weeks of coming to his house.

When I was about 6, I remember my Mother telling me that there was just ONE GOD. It made perfect sense to me. Then she taught me the Shma.... She tried to teach me Hebrew but neither of us was disciplined enough to keep it up. But, in her way, Mom taught me about the major Jewish holidays and we celebrated them as best we could.

Ways and Means

I got some criticism for being "dark" and negative in my German posts, but I'm afraid that that is how I feel or felt. Writing about it "lances the boil" and lets the wound I've been carrying heal.
I don't want to be like my Mom, who in her last years suffered from dementia. She often cried about her lost family and blamed herself for "taking her ass in two hands and running" (said in Yiddish).

Mom never or rarely talked about her escape - I never knew she carried so much guilt and I wondered at her absence of pain. Although, she was frantic in 1942 and had the Red Cross searching for her family. I still have the paperwork. She had been very, very close to her Mother and sister, Toni.

Toni was about 10 years older than Mom (who was the youngest of six) and Toni "mothered" Mom more than her Mother did from what she said.

Toni and Mom went every where together except school and, until her Father died, to shul. For some reason my grandfather favored Mom more than his other girls and took her with him every day to the temple. She learned to read Hebrew before Polish - and I don't think she used much Polish. So Yiddish would have been her daily language.

They lived in a "schetl" in Poland called "Nova Sanch". My Polish neighbors tell me it is a lovely little town - a tourist destination. Google tells me that the couple of hundred Jews who lived there were "liquidated" in 1942.

Mom left school around 14 - she had been bullied a lot and, without her sister at her side, felt isolated and lost. She and Toni then did a 2 or 3 years "internship" with a milliner who "fired" them as soon as they completed their time with her.

Mom's older sister, Helen, had "run away from home" and joined the Yiddish theatre. Mom didn't really know her as she was just a little thing when this happened. Helen died in Germany somewhere - in childbirth. No mention of a husband.

At some point my uncles left Poland and went to Germany. They set up a business together.
Uncle Sidney was trained as a tailor so he was the creative energy of the business. Uncle Alfred was the "salesman" - a good talker and a friendly outgoing personality - Mom's favorite brother.
Uncle Heini was the silent type but he was the bookeeper and the paper manager. They seemed to work well together but ended up breaking up at some point with bitterness and recriminations that lasted their whole lives.

My Uncle Alfred ended up in Chile and developed a big clothing business there which I think my cousin, Albert, still runs.

My Mother, Toni and my Grandmother decided that Poland was not where they wanted to stay.
I think there was no work and lots of hostility and their "men" were in Germany and so no protection.

So off they went.

In Germany they lived with one of the brothers - or maybe all of them - for a while. At some Point Uncle Heini married a non-Jew, Wally and they had Wolfgang. Alfred and Erna married on the cusp of their escape out of Germany. I don't know when Sidney married Helen but I'm betting she was part of the reason they all broke up. She could make a lot of trouble out of nothing and was not well accepted into the family. She came from Russia - wealthy at one point and never let anyone forget it.

Mom and Toni traveled about Berlin as a pair and often went to a beer garden to meet Jewish men. My Dad met my Mom there and talked her into dating him "withour your sister along".
It was a family joke for years, but not to Toni. When Mom married Dad she wouldn't talk to Mom for a year - after all, she was the older sister and was supposed to marry first but Mom was already 27 and Toni would have been 37 so how long could they wait?

Dad helped Mom get "legal" in Germany. I guess he was a kid of the streets and knew all kinds of ways to get things done. Mom talked of going to some house in another district and spending the night there and then, in the morning filling out some paperwork and Viola - she was German.

When Mom and I were getting ready to leave Germany in 1939 - my Grandmother and Toni and Toni's husband, Selig (who always seemed to "just arrive" in the story) decided to go back to Poland and I think they went to Tarnow. Google will tell you the same story - in 1942 all the Jews there were '"liquidated".

Sorry to be so "down", Carol, but that's the story - and we'll never know exactly how my Polish family died.

What I had intended to write about was my Mom's incredible ability to find and acquire things.
I wish I could remember the name the military gave to guys like that but, if you needed something, Mom could find it - even in the darkest rural corner of England.

Next "post" - I promise.

Where did all my energy go?

I've got Dahlia here today. She's 22 months old and go go go. Martin and Kelly are celebrating his birthday by going to see "Alice in Wonderland". We took Dahlia to the park - but she wasn't interested in feeding the ducks. She wanted to swing - then we hiked downhill to the play area which is a little too old for her but she tried different things in her own way - the slides worked the best. Morey took her on the merry-go-round and she was a trouper. She was so enamoured of the lights and mirrors she never got scared.

We came home and she fell asleep in the car but we made the mistake of trying to take her out when we got home. Then she was fully awake and off to the races. She ate a little something on the run - even lay down in the crib for 30 seconds. She insisted on having a pillow and very selectively chose the Disney Princesses blanket but she did want to sleep or even lie down.

The backyard beckoned with all it's mysteries and unknown quantities. She's never really been here to explore - and certainly not since she's older.

I love to hear her chatter. She tells MOrey "Bless you" whenever he sneezes - which is often.
She asks to use the potty and actually did something in it once. She's all over, trying everything and exploring every nook and cranny.

She's so beautiful she attracts attention wherever she goes. It's fun having such beautiful grandchildren.

But I miss my energy. I used to bounce around with them, chase them up and down the hall, dangle them on my knees or bounce them on my back as I played elephant. Now I just drag myself around and hope I can keep an eye on her so she doesn't get into trouble.

One of the aging issues I face, and my friends talk about it too is that we were once energetic and active and now are old - in spite of the fact that we never planned on it. It just happens.
One day you wake up and there are wrinkles, sagging butts, grey hair and short memories. Why is that a surprise? I'm a nurse - I've seen lots of aging and aged people. I just never thought I'd be one of them. Duh! There's a big gap between knowledge and experience.

Well, got to stop rambling - I promised Dahlia Colored pencils oy vey.

When will I learn

It is not a good idea to read intense literature just before bed. Not when you are inclined to insomnia.

I have been reading a dense history of the Holocaust - 600 pages or so - called The Years of Extermination 1938-1944. Since these were the years my family and I escaped from Berlin and went to England, I was very interested and I admit, that belatedly, I'm reading a lot of Holocaust materials.

For most of my life, it's been like that proverbial elephant in the room and I couldn't deal with it
but now I'm obsessed with it. I'm hoping that it's cathartic.

Tonight however, I got totally upset with the endless reiterations of anti-Semitic crap and endless pages with numbers in the hundreds of thousands of people carted of crammed into trains to "disposal" centers (terrible euphemisms for murder places). Shot, starved, experimented on, worked to death, beaten, gassed - young, old, ill, pregnant, women, men, children under 10, over 10 they could work; rich, poor, intelligent, stupid, religious, secular...........no difference. Babies with their heads bashed against walls.

I had nightmares of being chased in a forest when the children were small. Desperately trying to carry them to safety and runnin and running...............................

And a whole country in thralldom to a madman - and not knowing it - believing everything he said - and if not believing being too frightened to resist. A frail, said little tale once in a while of someone who reached out to help a Jew and was him or herself arrested and carted off to Bergen-Belsen, Buchanvald, Dachau, Sobidor, Auschwitz, and the names go on and on.
The neighbors complaining about the smoke of the burning Jews - even as they buy the shoes no longer needed by their former neighbors.

Country after country spilling their Jews into the hands of the Germans - France, Belgium, Holland, Norway, Sweden, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, Poland = some resisted for a while, dragged their feet- helped hide a few - provided visas for a few - but most sent them off to their death willingly, joyfully, glad to help themselves, to the homes, the clothes, the jewelry and household possessions. No shame, no guilt, no blood on their hands - they were just Jews.

And I'm angry at the Jews - so self deluding, in denial that this could be happening, unable to organize to fight back even if it's a lost cause. Unable even to agree upon a plan. Arguing even as they are carted off to die. So few places where they rose up and gave as good as they got.

I understand because even as I read I feel a total disbelief in the pure evil that befell my people.
That in modern times, in a civilized country with music, literature, poetry - this was not Uganda!

Were we so obedient - or so used to being abused and disposessed that we thought "Oh sh-t it's happening again."

Who could believe and be prepared for the smooth, efficient, scientific factory like eradication of 6 million people. 6,000,000 people - more if you include Gypsies and gays - and P oles -and
Serbs and Slav - people who did not fit the Aryan image.

And did you know Hitler had a Jewish grandparent within the numbers that would have labeled him Jewish, if he hadn't been the labeler

It boggles the mind - and this is the country I'm going to visit in June. Last time I was in Germany in the 1980's sometime, I sat on a train waiting to leave - reading a book so I was shocked when a man in uniform barked "AUSWEIS" at me. Even as I gathered he was a ticket taker - my body went into shock. I think I turned white. I know I almost wet my pants. The fear was right there. He did, in all honestly, see my distress and backed off, switched in English and made clear it was just tickets he wanted. But............in my genes, I knew he'd come to kill me at last.

How did we escape those death trains? I wish my parents were alive to ask these questions. When so many died, how did we live - and why?

I look at my grandchildren now and I know there'd be no mercy. There were cute babies then
and they were treated like vermin. The one that haunts me is the Town where the Germans came in and killed of all the adults. For some reason they saved 90 children under 5. 90 children under five were locked in a barn with no food, no water, no blankets, no adults.

The chaplains came and saw what was happening and complained to the Hauptleutenant.
After some discussion over a couple of days they sent the soldiers in to kill the children.
One officer had found a little fair haired girl who trusted Daddy like figures and she held onto him - he gently escorted to the shooting area and watched while she was shot.

Are these human beings? Do these people have a soul? And where were the voices of the religious leaders? Lutherans, Protestants, Catholics - - none saw any incongruity with their expressed faith and what they were engaged in.

I'll never find what I'm looking for which is an answer - How could a whole country do and stay sane- or become sane. I'll never forget the postcard a young soldier sent home to his girlfriend
to show what a hero he was - he posed lining up his rifle at a Jewish woman frantically trying to protect her baby = what a hero.

Ok, more cheeful next time.

The Hand of Fate

What a portentous title. But it's true, you know.

I've been reading again - about the Holocaust. Such casual words - 10,000 were picked up here and taken to _________. 85 survived the war. 14,000 were caught up in the net and taken to__________ . They were shot and shoved into open trenches - that they had had to dig first.
Oh yes, their clothes and possession were taken from them first - sometimes their fillings were dug out before they were shot sometimes after. They might not be dead yet when pushed into the trench, but the trenches were filled in anyway.

How close we came to that. A mere 6 weeks before the war started we ended up in England.

My Grandmother, my Aunt Toni and Uncle Selig had gone back to Poland thinking it was better than Germany for them. That's where they had started, with my Mom. Germany looked like a bright and wonderful future for them back then but now - in 1938 or 1939 (I don't know when)
Poland seemed like a safe haven.

Letters went back and forth as the family tried to stay connected. My Mother was very close with her older sister. She, my Mother, was the youngest of six children and her Father had died when she was 14. After 1942, we never heard from them again. The Red Cross could not find any documentation of their end. Shooting groups of Jews in Poland and pushing them into open graves - or leaving their bodies strewn around the streets and ghettos of Poland leaves no record.

My Mother's three brothers escaped. Uncle Sidney, the oldest, and his wife Aunt Helen (and she is another story entirely) left Germany in 1938 (I'm not sure of these dates but close enough).
My uncle had been picked up by the SS and taken to a concentration camp but in those days the camps had not become the killing fields they were later. My Aunt, in her inimitable way, went to the camp commander and begged, pleaded, cried, demanded - whatever - and he gave them 24 hours to get out of the country.

My Aunt had done the same thing for her Father in Russia when the Red Army arrested him. She was just a teenager then, but it worked. She, her sister and her Father had to leave in a hurry and they took the Trans Siberian Railway, ended up in Japan. From there they went to France and then Germany. Poor thing - from the frying pan into the fire.

Aunt Helen and Uncle Sid ended up in Brazil for 3 years - living somehow by him peddling stuff in the back country and jungles. Literally carrying a pack on his back. Somehow they made it to the USA - I never knew how they did it but they were legal and, after the war, sponsored my Mother, Father and myself to come to the United States.

My Mother's other two brothers, married and one with a little boy ran to Italy. My one uncle - Heini - was married to a non-Jew (Wally) but the handwriting was on the wall, the non-Jewish spouse was a ticket to survival but not for long and their son a "mischling" (mixture or mongrel) would not be excluded from their fate.

Italy turned out not to be such a good place for them either and they kept going. South America became their home, eventually Santiago, Chile. There they made a good life for themselves.
Uncle Albert and Aunt Erna had five children - four boys and the youngest a girl. Throughout my young life my Mother would show me pictures of my cousins and name them for me - like a nursery rhyme so that I knew I had family and felt attached to them. Norbetito, Leotito, Juanito and Albertito. Clarita was born about the time we came to the United States - 1947.

Uncle Heini and Aunt Wally had Wolfgang, born in Germany - and later Jaime. They opened a pharmacy and, as far as I know, Wolfgang still runs it in Santiago.

My Father's family was less lucky. I only recently (2009) found out that his brother Jussel, sister-in-law
Rosie and little boy, Sigfried were taken to Auschwitz in 1942. Rosie and Sigfried were killed immediately and Uncle Jussel lasted until 1944. His suffering must have been awful. Sigfried was a little older than me - 6 or so when he died.

I'm going to be Bat Mitzvah this summer and I'm naming Sigfried to share in my Bat Mitzvah - the opportunity he never had.

My Father's other brother, Gunther and his non-Jewish wife - Gretel - managed to get to Spain and lived in Barcelona until after the war. They had one daughter, Annemarie - who was raised Christian. After the war they went to Caracas, Venezuela.

I've lost track of Annemarie and her family (3 sons) after our parents died. She would write me a letter in Spanish, which her Mother would translate into German. Then my Mother would translate the German for me into English.

When they came to visit us in Los Angeles - about 1968 or 69 - we spoke in our broken German.
She and I look like sisters. But she is gone from my life now - I tried to trace her but to no avail.

My Father's Mother - my Grandmother Bertha - died in 1938. She was diabetic and got a gangrenous thumb. She died in surgery - which my Mother always said was murder by the Nazis. After all my reading, I'm inclined to believe her. Even in 1938 that should not have been a serious operation with such a fatal outcome.

After the war - when we came to the United States - my Father found somehow his first cousin
Maria Tannenburg and her son Horst. They had survived the camps and now lived in Skokie, Illinois. They visited us a couple of times - never talked about the camps. Horst is clearly a damaged person. A few times I tried to find out about my Father's family from him but he always says "I was just a teenage boy. I didn't pay much attention to the family connections.
But your Mother was so beautiful. You know I was at her wedding and I had a crush on her."

I tried writing to Horst and got pretty much the same few words every time. He did mention my Aunt Rosie and Sigfried and until he told me I had not known their names. My Mother - the person who connected me to family - focused on HER family. Horst also told me that my grandmother Bertha was one of 12 children - all married and with children - some of whom were old enough to have another generation of children. He told me that all were gone - only one uncle who got to Israel survived and, by the time, I got that story from Horst, that uncle had died too.

I figure that there must have been at least 60 people in my Father's family who never made it out.

Horst and I exchange New Year's cards - or actually his wife, Margo and I exchange New Year's cards. Very little information on them. They have one daughter who I met years ago. She wants nothing to do with the whole subject of Judaism, the war or for that matter, family. She made that clear.

So my Father and Mother grew up in the arms of a large, probably contentious family. There was one Uncle in my Father's family who was the Patriach and he decided that my Father wasn't smart enough for an advanced education and arranged for him to be trained as a plumber.
I know my Father was resentful - he had a speech defect which made his Uncle think he wasn't smart. But that trade was our ticket out of Germany.

This Uncle of my Father's did not want my Father to marry a Polish Jew. The German Jews felt very superior to them. The Polish Jews were thought of as being backward and dirty. He (my Father's Uncle) always checked my Mother's housekeeping when he came to visit and my Mother was very proud that he never found anything to complain about.

My Grandfather on my Father's side - Sigfried - was a soldier in the German army in World War I - he died from his wounds after the war - when my Father was 14. His widow raised the three boys - with the help of the family - but essentially alone. My Mother always said that those boys ran wild. My Father, Kurt, talked about the post war years with great bitterness as Germany was in an economic slump and there was high inflation. Survival was a struggle and he resented England and France for what they imposed on Germany which
ultimately led to the rise of Hitler.

I did not really know my Father. He left when I was one - we were reunited when I was 4 and I know he looked at me with bewilderment and alienation. I was English. I spoke English only. His English was pretty bad. I understood German but was not allowed to speak it. He tried to teach me songs in German and to give me a sense of "being German" but it was ashes in his mouth, I could tell. He tended to be dour and depressed but also a tease at times. I think he was a fun person before the war. He teased my Aunt Helen - with her airs and graces - by emphasizing his "peasant" status. He died when I was 14. Again that number 14.

So the life I was born into and the life I had were so entirely different. I felt English. I loved England. I did not want to leave England. And one day many years later, I realized I did not have one cell, not one gene that was English. I felt heartbroken.